Hunters Bay Trail expansion will cost an estimated $757,000

Huntsville Council has opted to move forward with the expansion of the Hunters Bay Trail despite being $143,000 over budget. The collaborative expansion, which will include a pedestrian bridge and floating trail, runs roughly just under a kilometre from Orchard Park at the end of East Airport Road to Huntsville’s Lakewood Park subdivision, It will cost approximately $757,000, according to a staff report presented to council at its May 23 meeting.

A breakdown above of who is paying for what to expand the Hunters Bay Trail.

“The biggest reason for the overage, if you will, is the requirements for additional fencing and additional engineering work, which is required by the [Ministry of Transportation] MTO,” explained Steve Hernen, Director of Operations and Protective Services. “We’ve purchased the floating trail, we’ve purchased the bridge, MTO has come along with their contract now and said ‘Okay, we’re ready. Oh by the way we want more fencing,’ hence the reason you’re looking at the cost you’re looking at today,” he told council.

Prompted by a question from Councillor Brian Thompson, Hernen confirmed that the MTO had requested that yet another engineer, from the same company, review and stamp all the drawings again. “Now you wonder why the Province is broke,” added Mayor Scott Aitchison.

Huntsville Councillor Nancy Alcock, an ardent supporter of the project, laid the blame for the cost overruns squarely on the MTO. “What we’re being asked to do is outrageous,” she said, adding that she would still be supporting the project, as long as the cost overruns come out of the parks reserve fund. “I think we’ve already spent over $400,000, so really the horses have left the barn from my perspective.”

Councillor Alcock suggested that perhaps the mayor could meet with the regional director of the MTO to express his concern about some of the requirements. Aitchison said he had met with the new regional director and found him to be much more progressive, which is likely why the project was able to get off the ground in the first place. “I’d be happy to meet with him again to see if there’s more we can do. I think some of the fencing requirements they want are ridiculous. I can understand perhaps fencing on the highway side of the trail but on the residential property side of the trail, it just seems ridiculous to me that they would require that and it’s adding thousands and thousands of dollars to this project.”

Councillor Jonathan Wiebe referred to the extension of the trail as a costly venture but also noted that park development of the waterfront would enhance the community and noted that the park reserve is comprised of funds which come from developers when they develop property. “It is a well-used trail and it is going to be more well used and so, yeah, I echo the frustrations and the… hoops that we’ve had to jump through with MTO, but here we are.”

Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano conceded that the project is already underway but said there is a lesson to be learned. “It’s fine to blame the MTO but we entered into this project before we had the final approvals and before we knew what was going on, for a number of different reasons,” she said.

This hasn’t been a great project for us and we may have turned back on it if we hadn’t got into it before we knew what was going on. So I hope that maybe we’re going to learn from this. We need to know what’s down the road before we start. Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano

Aitchison noted that dealing with the MTO has been difficult. “I guess we won’t be building any more trails around the highway. I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all learned something in terms of our experience with dealing with the MTO. I would suggest to you that every other single project this council has undertaken and have our staff undertake is very well thought out… in fact we had a surplus last year of almost a half a million dollars,” he said, adding that the municipality is a well-run operation.

This is strictly about trying to deal with an agency that doesn’t know how to deal with things that are new and that’s the challenge we’re facing. Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison

Don McCormick and Steve Alcock, who have been championing the project for some time, were in the audience. “At the end of the day we are building what I think will be a first class trail,” said Mr. Alcock. “It is founded two-thirds by other people’s money. I regret deeply the fact that we’ve had to come back [asking for more money]. I want to offer Karin Terziano the opportunity to throw me under the bus for leading this charge, as I did at different times.”

Mr. Alcock told council it has been a difficult project to predict. “The ability to predict this budget was based on a constantly moving target, where every time we submitted plans, we got something new.” He said unpredictable things happened. “We have a bridge for instance that was required to be approximately eight feet above the 100-year flood plain. By the time that hits the town of Huntsville, the docks will be eight feet under the water but our bridge won’t be. That was an MTO requirement,” he said, adding that as the mayor had pointed out, “we’re fencing between our neighbour and our neighbour has no interest in this fence and it’s approximately $60,000 worth of fencing.” He said 18 per cent of the cost is a result of engineering requirements alone. “At the end of the day, I want to thank you for sticking with us and I want to remind you that Scott has in front of him the paper we dreamed of 13 or 14 years ago, which is the permission to do this… perhaps it’s our 150^th project,” he added, referring to Canada’s 150^th anniversary this July.

In the end, council directed staff to move forward with the project and enter into an agreement for the same with the MTO.

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